


Shelter from the Storm

by ReaperWriter



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, previously posted on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:17:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1914177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn’t make them whole, this fledgling love they’ve found.  True love may be the most powerful magic, but the stories get it wrong.  It doesn’t heal all wounds, absolve you of all loss.  Instead, true love gives you strength to face your demons, and someone to have your back for the fight.  It’s a fair wind even on a rough sea, and a port to come into out of the storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shelter from the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Eddy and Adam for this world, and for sharing it with all of us.

_I was in another lifetime one of toil and blood_  
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud  
I came in from the wilderness a creature void of form  
“Come in” she said  
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.

For three hundred years, he had used rum as a way to hold the demons at bay at night.  Rum, liberally applied, until he was a sodden drunken wreck upon Morpheus’s shores, blacked out and dreamless.  There was a night, within the first year after Milah, when they were not quite to port, and he had misjudged his capacity to imbibe.  The cask ran utterly dry.  And he had woken up screaming like all the fiends of hell were after him.  After that, he had made carefully sure to never suffer a shortfall again.  A full 50% of the Jolly’s cargo space entering Neverland’s waters was taken up with rum casks and a still in case of emergencies.

He still drinks, now, but he finds his flask a far less frequent companion than it once was.  In the months since the final battle with Zelena and his trip to the past, things with Emma have been good.  Even with the new issues in town with Elsa and the unnatural winter that followed, he finds that he is no longer chasing a dream of golden hair and soft smiles.  Instead, there are mornings he wakes to it, his face buried in the silk of her curls, her back warm against his chest, cinnamon and vanilla filling his nose.

The dreams still come, sometimes, but not with the intensity they once did.  And it’s different now.  The first time he wakes up, gasping for air and Liam’s name on his lips, she’s beside him, her touch feather light on his arm, murmuring words of comfort and his name, his real name, over and over in his ear.  Gone are the captain’s quarters where he would wake alone.  It’s as if, by her very presence, she kept the worst of it at bay.

The first time he woke to her crying in her sleep, he found that his time with Milah had taught him something.  He reached out and turned her, pulling her close to him.  His hand stroked her hair as he hummed a soft tune against her jaw.  Shirt soaked with her tears, he held her tight against him until the tremors subsided, and Killian and thank you whispered soft against his skin.

It doesn’t make them whole, this fledgling love they’ve found.  True love may be the most powerful magic, but the stories get it wrong.  It doesn’t heal all wounds, absolve you of all loss.  Instead, true love gives you strength to face your demons, and someone to have your back for the fight.  It’s a fair wind even on a rough sea, and a port to come into out of the storm.  So while he still drinks, from time to time, in celebration or in mourning, it’s no longer to keep the dreams at bay.  When her eyes find his, and a soft smile crosses her face, he feels he can face whatever dreams may come.

_Well I’m living in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line_  
Beauty walks a razor’s edge someday I’ll make it mine  
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born  
“Come in” she said  
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.


End file.
